OS Development tips

[peteruithoven]

Fixes #
Lack of general tips for development on elementary OS itself.

Changes Summary

• Adds a very crude os-dev page with tips.

Is this something we want? Is this the place to do it?

[jepotter1-archive]

+1 on adding a centralized guide on contributing to elementaryOS! This would really help new people begin contributing. We could also link to it from get-involved.

Addition: how to develop a window manager

Yes, I actually wanted to write some kind of guide for people that do that
Your escape from this is one of the TTY sessions Linux provides
So if your gala crashes you can get to another terminal by hitting e.g: Ctrl+Alt+F1
You login there and you're in
Then if gala didn't crash but hang, you just kill it with killall gala
Now you need to start gala inside the graphical session
Unfortunately DISPLAY=:0 gala doesn't work
So you spawn a terminal app in the graphical session and it will be automatically focused because there is no WM: DISPLAY=:0 io.elementary.terminal
Then you switch to the graphical session by hitting Ctrl+Alt+F7
And launch gala in the newly opened terminal window: (gala -r &) &
Gala should start and you can close this terminal
If your gala can't start, you have to either reinstall it (sudo apt install --reinstall gala) or fix the error in your code with an editor like vi, both in the TTY session"
- @donadigo

[jeremypw]

Suggest adding a section on the basic use of gdb to obtain a backtrace and maybe touch on set env G_DEBUG='fatal-criticals'

Maybe also mention io.elementary.vala-lint

[peteruithoven]

Thanks @JWinnie, I've included the tip from @donadigo on restarting Gala.
@jeremypw While I agree gdb or G_DEBUG='fatal-criticals' are super interesting I'm not knowledgeable enough to write those sections. PR's are more than welcome.

I'm going to try adding something on the vala linter.

[btkostner]

There seems to be a mdr markdown error when rendering this page that should get fixed before pushed live.

[btkostner]

I also want someone from @elementary/desktop-developers to review this before we merge as well.

[peteruithoven]

@btkostner this "mdr markdown error", I don't see this when I run it locally. Also not when using npm run lint. How can I reproduce it?

[btkostner]

@peteruithoven It's a PHP offset error. It doesn't prevent the page from loading, but it shows up in the console, so I want to fix it.

[jeremypw]

I am by no means and expert on gdb so I was envisaging only the simplest commands to produce a backtrace (that is all I use) and a link to a good tutorial on the web.

[peteruithoven]

I'd love for someone who has actually used gdb to do a separate PR. I don't think it's a reason to hold back this PR.
I've implemented the other suggestions.

I'll wait for more information on the "mdr markdown error".

[jeremypw]

@peteruithoven : That's fine. There is no need to hold this PR up.

[peteruithoven]

@RMcNeely thanks for the review. @cassidyjames thanks for the improvements.

[cassidyjames]

lol I don't know how that happened, thanks. 😅

[peteruithoven]

In a future PR I'd also like to include D-Feed, for debugging / experimenting with Dbus interfaces.

[cassidyjames]

@btkostner is that build error still happening here? Otherwise this looks good to me.

old

[btkostner]

@cassidyjames nope